I just can’t get enough of this photo of Shawn rolling 1107.
VORRA has rolled out their new website and we’re featured as their first “Profile in Courage.” (Ok, that was my idea.) They’ll be doing them on other race teams in the coming months.
Also learned that we scored a trifecta in this month’s Dusty Times. 1107 is one of the featured cars in a full page ad placed by VORRA. We get a mention in the recap of the first race of the 2011 season.
Hey all, if you’re looking to follow the 2011 Baja 1000 online, click here.
Sadly sitting out the 1000 this year. We’ll be back with a vengeance in 2011.
Update Six: IRC tracking goes live for North peninsula and South peninsula.
Update Five: Live streaming from Ensenada on Justin.tv courtesy of kadujr65 (H/T to Puro Offroad)
Update Four: Added the Baja Unlimited live tracking (I’m interviewed in their Baja 1000 Special Edition DVD set. Buy it!)
Update Three: Added vtr_racing, SPEED_ENERGY and manitou to the Twitter list. Added Robby Gordon’s new live tracking website (still not as sophisticated as what we run). Added Baldwin Chase #3 on Spot.
Update Two: Added JacopianonBoard to the Twitter list.
Update One: Added BFGintheDirt and mattlanning to the Twitter list.
Two years ago the only ones live-tweeting the Baja 1000 were Robby Gordon and us. Now everyone’s doing it. Since we’re taking this year off, I’ll be stuck in front of multiple computers tracking everything online. If you know anything I’ve missed, email me at jim@desertdingo.com.
Weatherman live – Not live yet
Race-Dezert streams the Weatherman live. I’ll post the link when they take it live. Don’t forget to play the Weatherman drinking game – take a shot every time he calls someone a “Richard Cranium.”
IRC live vehicle tracking – Live now – North Peninsula / South Peninsula
International Racing Consultants handles live tracking of all race vehicles, though not motorcycles). Looks like they’ve got an improved interface over previous years.
Twitter
Loads of people are live tweeting the race. I’ve collected everyone I know of on this public list. Should be interesting to see what happens when they get into the desert without cell service. People are already reporting on how pre-running is going.
Here’s what they look like in newspaper format. And here’s who’s on the list:
Baja1000Race, bajasurracing, BFGintheDirt, chadragland, CHUCKDEMPSEY, DIRTFORGE, JacopianOnBoard, joebacal, Lunar_Tide, manitouMattLanning, MonsterEnergyTJ, n2itracing, planetrobby, pure_offroad, robbygordon, rodhallracing1, ryanarciero, SPEED_ENERGY, TBDesignworks, TMR_LaFortune, Trophy_Truck, usgazelles, yoloracing, vtr_racing.
Websites posting regular updates
Race Dezert
DirtNewz
Baja Racing News
People doing interesting things
Robby Gordon’s live tracking website.
Arciero Race – Reporting in with a Spot tracker
Race photographer Charlene Bower – Reporting in with a Spot tracker
Baldwin Chase #3 on Spot
Baja 1000 on Facebook
We’re going fully HD for 2011, courtesy of GoPro.
November 11, 2010, Felton, Calif. – Desert Dingo Racing announced today that GoPro, maker of the world’s bestselling and highest performance wearable HD video cameras, is renewing its support for the team in 2011.
Desert Dingo Racing competes in off road desert racing in California and Nevada and is the official World Diabetes Day race car in the Baja 1000. The team raises money to support diabetes awareness and education programs sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation.
Imagine this is 1107, except the parts are 30 miles away from each other and we leave for the race in two days.
Bob reports that, come hell or high water (probably “hell”), the engine will be back together Wednesday night, tops! We’ve got tires down at Dixon & Son Tires in Watsonville that need to be put on rims we’ve got around here someplace. That plus cramming everything back in 1107, loading the trailer and driving to Prairie City Friday afternoon. Where it will rain all weekend. No problem.
I’m totally lifting this from the October issue of Dusty Times and will probably do federal time for it. Thank you, Troy Robinson of Koenig Racing and Total Chaos, for the Class 11 writeup (recounting everyone racing the VORRA Fallon 250 night race where we got stuck in a box canyon at 11 p.m., blocking about 100,000 horsepower worth of race vehicles for a good 30 minutes).
The Class 11 victory went to Gary Herrod (1112, the green one). Herrod and co-driver got stuck in the silt once and learned that they can lift front and rear ends out of the silt onto a more firm part of the track. Herrod even managed to stay in front of a “certain racing truck” during the rough section for quite a way due to the thick dust until the truck was able to get the top speed up and make a clean desert pass (I’m not mentioning any numbers here!!) At the finish, Herrod had a 52 minute victory over second place.
Bob Messer (1177, the silver one) was running third place most of the day with some long first laps. He gathered it up in the end and finished second place. At one point as they were cruising along they pulled over for a car and later found out it was a pass for position but got the place back a few miles later.
Richard Palasik (1107, the white one), had some misfortune during pre-running. The ball joint broke on the car and while this is normally not a big deal for the 11s, it wasn’t without drama. During repairs a pry bar slipped, smashing Richard’s hand, sending him to the hospital for stitches, antibiotics and a thumb splint, but not before they fixed the car to drive it out of the desert. During a test run they determined that he can’t drive without opposable thumbs, so a relief driver was put in. The race starts and they take a quart of oil a lap (normal for an air cooled, isn’t it?) and make a pass on the aforementioned Messer, only to pull over a few miles later to add oil and get passed back – they didn’t realize it was for position and they were on the same lap. Oh yeah, one other note. On their way to third place, the steering wheel came off just before check point one at top speed (45 mph). Doesn’t that only happen in cartoons?”
Things are gonna get interesting in the post-season.
P.S. Photo of the ‘sploded VW is from an art installation by Damian Ortega.
From Crusty’s place to mine courtesy of Nation of Go’s iPhone app.
I really like what the Nation of Go folks are doing. Creating a social network for drivers of all sorts. I’m more frustrated with the technology, aka the iPhone, because it doesn’t multitask, you can’t play Words with Friends and do a NOG Drive at the same time. Call me biased because they did a feature on us on their cross country tour.
Anyway, here’s the route from Crusty’s place back to mine (I mis-labeled it.) You can find me on Nation of Go as DesertDingo.
P.S. We’ve just passed through 1,200 downloads of the Desert Dingo Racing iPhone and Android apps.